Proposition A Wins Big

Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.

Kyla Calvert is the education reporter forKPBS, producing multimedia content for radio, television and the Web. Kyla began producing web content while working in marketing in San Francisco. She decided to change careers and received a master’s degree in journalism with a concentration in digital media from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2009. While in school she freelanced for City Hall and The Capitol newspapers covering New York City and state politics and policy. After completing her degree, she worked as a fellow for Hearst Newspapers on “Dead By Mistake” a nationwide investigative project about medical error. The project received the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award. Kyla moved to San Diego from Beaufort County, South Carolina where she covered county government for The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette.